Dana Stirling

My family roots back to England, but I was born in Israel. I was a child on a fence; a daughter to a migrating family. I always felt a misfit with my partial incomplete identity; torn apart between parents who have never blended in to the Israeli culture I felt only half belonged too.
Over the years I have heard of my parent’s memories and stories. Stories of happier days. The stories held on to the memories of time and culture that I wasn’t a part of, and portraits of family members that always remained anonymous to me. These stories were supposed to be my heritage. As I grew up I’ve started to question photography’s function as my memory, as my heritage.
I’ve browsed throw these old photos trying to look for a family but all I found was empty spaces. Stories of places I’ve never been to, people I never saw and a period that I haven’t lived in. Using photography I‘ve conducted an examination of my history. The images become objects that I use in order to create a new history and memory of my own; people and places as I would like to remember and understand them.